


The Darker Side of Fairytales

by bessemerprocess



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: kink_bingo, Consent, Disturbing Themes, Episode Related, Episode: s03e19 Out Of The Blue, F/M, Rape, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:30:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She doesn't even see the clicker, just the lock popping up and John hauling her out of the car.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darker Side of Fairytales

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is disturbing. It contains a whole bag of triggers, so please read the tags before reading.

She doesn't even see the clicker, just the lock popping up and John hauling her out of the car. She tries to fight back, but her limbs go every which way and he is stronger than she remembers.

"Stop fighting me, Helen," John snarls.

She kicks at his shins. He drags her into the house. She tries to crane her neck, to see what what's happening to Dr. Zimmerman, but John just forces her up and over his shoulder, shoving the front door shut behind him.

"Put me down," she orders, but he ignores her, hauling her up the steps and into their bedroom. It's still theirs, she hasn't sleep in here since she told him to get out. The couch is comfortable enough, and there are less memories that haunt her there.

He dumps her unceremoniously on the bed and when she tries to get back up, he pushes her down again.

"Let me go," she shouts in his face.

"No," he shouts right back. "You were going to drive that car off a cliff, Helen."

"How do you know that?" she asks. There isn't any possible way he should have that information.

"You told me," he says.

"I certainly did not," she replies. "You aren't real, are you?" She rolls away from him, trying to make it off the bed before he catches her. She doesn't make it.

"Helen, you are being hysterical," he replies. John grabs a bottle off the nightstand. She doesn't know what it is doing there. It should be on the side table next to the couch. Nothing makes sense anymore. John pops the lid off the diazepam, and shoves one past her lips. They're tiny little things, uncoated, so they start dissolving on contact. He forces three more into her mouth.

"There," John says, still pining her down. "We're just going to wait until those kick in and then we're going to talk."

Four is double the dose she takes for the worst anxiety attacks. Four is enough to leave her limbs leaden and her mind fuzzy. Usually it would be more than enough to put her to sleep, but John's agitated energy and her elevated sense of danger are enough to keep her awake.

As the medicine takes over, the tension drains from her body as much as she really wants to keep it. She needs to get out of here. John has a glint in his eye and all the warning bells in her head are going off in double time.

"Let me go," she says again, this time in a steady voice.

John lets go of her wrists and sits next to her on the bed. "I'm not leaving."

"I don't want you here."

"Once again, you wanted to drive your car off a cliff, and while I applaud you getting rid of the annoying neighbor, you had no plans to jump out at the last minute. You wanted to die, Helen," John says.

"Wanted? What I want is to wake up."

"You are awake," he says, stroking her hair. "You are awake, and this is real, and I love you."

"It's not, John," she says and then sighs in frustration. "Oh, just go. It doesn't matter if it's real or not."

"I'm not leaving," he repeats, and leans down to kiss her forehead. "You are my wife, and I am going to make you happy. I promised, remember?"

She does remember. The beat up Toyota that he was driving back then. The summer's heat on her skin. The ring she never returned to him, not even when she told him to get out of the house.

"You can't make me happy, John. It doesn't work like that."

He leans in and kisses her, hard on the lips. "Let me try."

"No, just leave me be."

"At least let me take off your shoes, I know how you feel about them in bed," he says, and before she can decide how to reply, he is unlacing her boots and easing them off. He pulls her socks off too, and she felts oddly naked as he wraps a hand around her ankle. He strokes his thumb over the arch of her foot, running his hand around her ankles and finally up under her pants. "Let me make you comfortable," he says.

The diazepam is dragging her down, and she doesn't even think to object before he's gotten her pants down to her knees.

He kisses her face again, and then hushes her as she tries to object. "Shh, let me remind you that there are good things in this world, too," he says and then the rest of her clothing is gone as well.

"Please, John, don't do this," she says, ineffectively trying to push his hands away.

"Just let me make you happy, Helen," John whispers. He kisses his way down her body, her neck, her clavicle, her breasts, the flat of her stomach and the swell of her thigh. "We could be happy," he says again, so softly. She remembers this. Remembers enjoying it, remembers wanting it. Now his every touch feels like it leaves behind dirt.

He makes his way down to juncture of body and thigh. She wonders if he ever does anything different. Make her come with his tongue and then fuck her into the bed. He rarely deviated when they were together.

She ignores him, retreating into her own head, hoping that she'll wake up any moment in a tank full of water. That should be a scary thought, but she longs for it right now.

He gives up after a while when she doesn't respond, kissing his way back up her body, stopping to tease her nipples in a way she knows he thinks she likes. She never has, but communication had broken down by that point and she had never bothered to tell him. She just wants this to be over.

John pushes into her, and she wonders if he really thinks this is what will make her happy: the thrusting of his hips while she lies beneath him wondering when this will all stop. He kisses her face, brushes his thumb against her cheek and whispers platitudes. She lays there, because she's not even sure she could walk, let alone escape and she's a little afraid of what he might do if she tried. She lays there because this is John, and she loved him once and she doesn't know what he'll do if she tells him to stop. She lays there, because she's pretty sure none of this is real. The world where she keeps waking up in a tank of water, that is what is real. This is just whoever has taken her prisoner trying to keep her from escaping.

This is not real, Helen Magnus tells herself.

John comes inside her and she doesn't cry.

He rolls off her eventually, and tucks her up under his arm, spooning his body around her. It doesn't take long before he is asleep beside her. Helen can't think about this now, can't let rationality stop her. She's still sure she was right. That none of this was real. That if she dies in the dream, she'll wake up.

She is careful not to disturb him, as she reaches for the discarded pill bottle. She swallows them down, one, then two, then all of them.

John shifts in his sleep, pulling her back to his chest, and she lets him, waiting to fall asleep. Waiting to wake up.


End file.
